Comparative Literature and the Ideology of Metaphor, East and West
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CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 2 (2000) Issue 4 Article 3 Comparative Literature and the Ideology of Metaphor, East and West Karl S.Y. Kao Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Recommended Citation Kao, Karl S.Y. "Comparative Literature and the Ideology of Metaphor, East and West." 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UNIVERSITY PRESS <http://www.thepress.purdue.edu > CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 < http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb > Purdue University Press ©Purdue University CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture , the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." In addition to the publication of articles, the journal publishes review articles of scholarly books and publishes research material in its Library Series. Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Langua-ge Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monog-raph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: < [email protected] > Volume 2 Issue 4 (December 2000) Article 3 Karl S.Y. Kao, "Comparative Literature and the Ideology of Metaphor, East and West" <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol2/iss4/3> Contents of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 2.4 (2000) <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol2/iss4/> Abstract : In his article, "Comparative Literature and the Ideology of Metaphor, East and West," Karl S.Y. Kao offers a comparative reading of the ideological function of metaphor within Eastern and Western thinking. Nietzsche is recognized as the earliest serious challenger to the concepts of meaning and truth within the West, whilst Derrida and de Man are discussed with respect to their conception that figurality is inherent within -- and integral to -- Western philosophical and literary discourse. Parallel to this conception of conceptuality is the Eastern view of language and literature. Kao notes that the Western opposition between logic and rhetoric is not inherent within -- or integral to -- Eastern thought. He examines various rhetorical figures within Eastern philosophy and literature and a contrasting between affective (expressive; East) and mimetic (representational; West) is urged and interrogated. Eastern thought may be distinguished by an awareness of the problematical status of the conceptuality of thought. Despite this awareness, parallel problems threaten to emerge -- whilst the West has tried to inaugurate a distinction between metaphor and concept, the East has tended to subsume them. On the one hand, we encounter a problematical distinction between meaning and truth; on the other hand, we encounter a problematic equivocation. Karl S.Y. Kao, "Comparative Literature and the Ideology of Metaphor, East and West" page 2 of 9 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 2.4 (2000): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol2/iss4/3> Karl S.Y. KAO Comparative Literature and the Ideology of Metaphor, East and West Traditional confidence in the ability of conceptual thinking to control the working of rhetorical figures started to receive serious challenges in the nineteenth century. Nietzsche pointed out that thinking is always and inseparably tied to the rhetorical devices that are part and parcel of language itself. Not only does the philosophical discourse lack epistemological superiority over other kinds of discourse, it is self-deluding for us to think that any kind of discourse could be exempted from rhetorical penetration and contamination. Set forth mainly in the well-known essay that describes "truth" as a used-up, worn-out metaphor, Nietzsche's criticism of the truth-claim of philosophical discourse as illusory has to do with his mistrust of metaphysics. Reality and truth are not accessible without mediation, while interpretations and "anthropomorphisms" have their roots not in some transcendental source but the drive to appropriate and conquer, the "will to power" (42-47). Deconstructive criticism follows up on this by inquiring into the problematics of rhetoric and figural discourse, making inquiries in this respect a fundamental aspect of its project. Both Derrida and de Man have examined the question in detail and exposed how thinking is bound to rhetorical devices, how figures are connected with metaphysics and ideology. To recapitulate briefly, in Derrida's view, the Western tradition since the time of Plato has been confused by the thinking that there are fixed truths and non-linguistic facts "out there," that through the tools of reason, argumentation, and evidence, philosophy and science could capture or uncover these truths. This thinking follows from a belief in the "metaphysics of presence" which, however, could never be reached or realized through language. All fiscourses, philosophical or scientific, are in reality but varieties of "writing," systems of signs, which are characterized by différance and the free play of signs. The logocentric purpose, the pursuit of "transcendental signified," arrests this play by suppressing the difference in the sign and freezing the differing process. This is also the moment when, in Derrida's words within Of Grammatology (1976), "a metaphoric mediation has insinuated itself into the relationship [between the signifier and the signified] and has simulated immediacy" (15). What is called "literal truth" is but a willful interruption of the free play of language and the restriction of the sense of the sign as determinate. As David Novitz puts it in his 1985 article "Metaphor, Derrida, and Davidson," "When once we freeze this play, when once we speak determinately, we are ... speaking metaphorically" (105). In a logocentric system, where language is used in a "determinate" way, speaking will appear to have definite meanings. Philosophers have dreamt for language to be purified of its contamination by figures and rectified of the aberration, but it is only through a "double effacement" of the metaphor that this illusion is sustained. Exploring the question of "metaphor in the text of philosophy," Derrida shows in "White Mythology" that philosophy is a "process of metaphorization which gets carried away in and of itself" (211); it is not so much that metaphor is in the text of philosophy but theses texts are in metaphor. In reading a text, says Derrida in Of Grammatology that "it is not ... a matter of inverting the literal meaning and the figurative meaning but of determining the `literal' meaning of writing as metaphoricity itself" (15). The choice of a metaphor inevitably entails the positing of a perspective or frame, a positioning of the discourse in its "will to power." In this view, dominant values and ideologies of a given time are supported by the ruling metaphors, as Foucault's conception of discursive formation would also argue. Philosophy, then, is a kind of writing that